Focus Snap

I was going out with a couple of pals yesterday and I suggested we go St. Abbs as I wanted to give my 70-200mm lens a good check out to see if it was functionning properly after it crashed to the ground on the tripod. There is a colony of seagulls who nest on a cliff stack just round from the harbour which you can get quite close to if you are willing to clamber over some rocks.

I thought shooting some birds in flight would be the ideal way to check if the autofocus on the lens was still working properly, always assuming that I could lock onto them in the first place. I needed not to have worried, the lens performed superbly and using servo mode I was able to track gulls for long periods. In fact, it turned out to be my most successful BIF session ever. Where the number of shots in sharp focus was in inverse proportion to my success with water droplets ie. my succees rate was around 90% whilst I am lucky to get 10% of my water droplet shots any way near right. I was astounded that once I had locked on to the bird I was able to track across the path of harbour buildings and other posible distractions whilst still retaining focus on the bird.

I think we can say that the lens is fine. It is amazing that this f4 lens mid-price range lens is so rugged as it has been dropped once before ! Full marks to the Canon L series lenses and a lot of relief on my part.